As Mike Ashley considers how Singapore's Profitable Group will seek to turn a profit from investing £100m in Newcastle United and turning it into a fans' trust, investors are wondering where is the upside in other Profitable interests.

Among those interests is "Profitable Plots ... a strategic land investment company". This offers the chance to buy land such as at Cherry Tree Grove in Colchester which, once planning permission is received, will instantly increase in value.

But how to reconcile those promises with two separate local authority refusals of plans to build a 77-bed and then 87-bed hotel at Cherry Tree Grove on the grounds that it is too far out of town and in a Countryside Conservation Area? One respondent during the planning application process thinks he knows the answer. "These companies purchase protected land and then make proposals for development. They then resell the land to investors at 10 times or more profit in Asia and Canada, giving the impression that planning permission will be achieved," the respondent wrote to planners.

Not so, says Profitable's Canadian client services manager, Dan Strumos. "These accusations are false. Our headquarters are in Singapore and that would be the last place on earth for corporate shenanigans because the penalty for it is death."

But could Profitable Group by any chance be a new incarnation of The Profitable Plot Company that was the subject of a 2007 application for compulsory winding-up by the then secretary of state for trade and industry, only voluntarily to appoint a liquidator six months later? The very same! Tim Goldring, Nigel Blanchard and Neil Osborn were directors of that firm and all are now listed on the Singapore firm's website. There is one new face, though: the group commercial director and former Liverpool captain, Steve McMahon. It's a funny old game.

Toon-less in the Algarve

One guess which club was the most notable absentee from opening of the two-day Football League meeting on the Algarve. Quite right: Newcastle United, although St James' Park executives might have picked up a tip or two. Speakers in a conference on how football must tackle the economic recession were the head of Deloitte's sports group, Dan Jones, and the former Millwall owner and TV Dragon, Theo Paphitis.

Mawhinney headache

The Football League chairman, Brian Mawhinney, will today attempt to persuade his clubs to adopt one of the measures which he outlined in his letter last month to the former culture secretary, Andy Burnham. But it will not be easy. Not only does Lord Mawhinney need a majority of all clubs to back his proposal to place transfer embargoes on teams who fall behind on payments to the taxman, he also requires the support of half of the chairmen of Championship clubs. And one owner of a major tier-two club grumbled: "It is a fundamental right of any business to negotiate with its creditors. This must not be allowed

to happen."

Under the Hammer?

West Ham United's new owner, Straumur, is expected to receive the Reykjavik courts' confirmation to continue trading for six more months with the extension of a standstill agreement with creditors today. But a bigger challenge lies on 6 August when its plans for the Premier League club's future are laid out to creditors. If they consider that piecemeal the club is more valuable than the loss-making sum of its parts, fans should brace themselves for a fire sale of players. After all, a share of £50m raised in the transfer market this summer is bread today; why wait five years for a possible share of £150m of jam tomorrow when that gamble is predicated on staying in the Premier League?

Cup construction concern

Yesterday marked 365 days out from the World Cup in South Africa and there is still much work to be done on stadium construction. Cape Town's Green Point stadium is only 60% complete after a four-month delay caused by the accommodation of a colony of local seagulls. Most other new builds are only 70% finished and there is just six months left before testing must begin under Fifa rules.